Generally, in the field of wireless communication the technology of long term evolution (LTE) is being standardized by the 3GPP as a technology allowing higher bandwidth with reduced latencies, in particular in order to allowing the introduction of new services with higher data needs than offered by the available cellular networks supporting 2G (GSM, GPRS, EDGE) or 3G (UMTS, HSPA). At the same time there are tendencies of the network operators to reduce the number of maintained cellular network standards. At long sight it is expected that at least one of the legacy networks will be switched off.
On the other hand the definition of the long term evolution standard implies that devices supporting the standard—no matter in what kind of service—need to provide certain capabilities which require wireless devices with a remarkable processing power. In particular the need to support a 20 MHz frequency band in one millisecond requires a significant amount of hardware resources on the side of the wireless device.
This situation is of course incompatible with the growing trend of machine type communication (MTC) devices. Those MTC devices are typically those where machines like vending machines, point of sale (POS) devices, electricity meters or home security devices regularly communicate via the cellular network with remote servers, and they are preferably designed for rarely receiving or sending small amounts of data. The MTC devices are usually equipped with a wireless module incorporating all required components for conducting all signaling exercises with the cellular network they are operating in.
From a cost perspective a machine type communication device like the mentioned examples would merely be attractive if a LTE capable wireless module would be incorporated. At the same time there are by now already millions of MTC devices in the field, and if only they would switch to LTE, the present LTE capable networks would capacity wise be overwhelmed with this load. This is the case even if the MTC devices as such are only rarely sending data, as a remarkable amount of overhead signaling is required according to today's standard specification without providing any payload.
There is therefore a need for an adaptation of the LTE standard in order to on the hand support low cost devices, in particular MTC devices, and on the other hand to prepare the LTE networks for serving the expected amount of MTC devices.
It is by now known that a reduction of the 20 MHz frequency band to a smaller portion of carriers that need to be processed in the baseband of the MTC devices would reduce the processing resources on side of the wireless device. Furthermore it is under investigation if the received radio frequency (RF) bandwidth could be reduced. However, those attempts only partly solve the addressed problem; in particular it is not clear if this measure turns out an advantage for the LTE networks. Further there are still remarkable hardware resources needed for the wireless device to operate in a LTE network adapted in that way.
It is therefore the goal of present invention to overcome the addressed situation and to propose a solution for an improved communication protocol between components of an LTE capable cellular network and a wireless device.
Further alternative and advantageous solutions would, accordingly, be desirable in the art.